If I Cannot Do It Properly I Would Rather Not

Nothing has been finished in this house in a long time.

Not because of time, and not because of money, and not because anybody here is short of care. Because of a standard, and the standard is the thing nobody has ever looked at directly.

Here is the standard as it actually operates. A thing counts as done when it is right. And right means there is nothing in it that you can see and wince at.

That sounds reasonable said quickly. Read it again slowly and you will notice something. It has no upper limit and no stopping point built into it. There is no state a job can arrive at where that condition is satisfied, because the eye that is checking gets better every year and the list of things it can see gets longer.

So the work goes on and the calling it done never happens, and after a few years a person concludes that they are somebody who does not finish things.

They are not. They are somebody operating a definition that cannot be met, and the definition was never examined because it looked like a virtue.

You are somebody who is allowed to call a thing done, and a standard nobody can reach has never once been the same as having high standards.

So the wall was finished

There is a single sentence in Nehemiah, at the end of the building, and what it does not contain is the point.

So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty and two days. (Nehemiah 6:15, King James Version)

So the wall was finished.

And then a date, and then a duration, and then the sentence ends.

There is no assessment. There is no note about the quality of the stonework. There is nobody standing back and evaluating whether it met the standard it should have met. The wall was finished, on a day, after a period of time, and that is the whole of the record.

You have a finish recorded as a date and not as a grade, and the word finished has never once meant that somebody was satisfied with it. Nehemiah 6:15 gives a day and a duration and offers no assessment at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that an event rather than a verdict.

And it is worth knowing what that wall was actually like. It went up in fifty two days, under threat, by people who were not builders, in a hurry, with tools in one hand and a weapon in the other.

Nobody in that account pretends it was beautiful. The finishing is what gets recorded, and the finishing is what changed the city.

You were never required to produce something nobody could fault, and a wall built at speed by tired people has never once been called anything but finished. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when a thing gets called done, and the written word puts a date on it and stops.

Done is a decision and not a threshold

So here is the practical claim, and it is the whole of this row.

Finished is not a property the work acquires. It is a thing a person says about the work, at a moment they choose, and it becomes true when it is said.

That sounds like cheating and it is not. It is how every finished thing in the world got finished, including everything you admire, including the things that look effortless.

You have a word to say rather than a level to reach, and done has never once been a property that a piece of work acquires on its own. Nehemiah 6:15 records the finishing as an event on a day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a decision a legitimate way to end a thing.

And here is why the decision keeps not being made.

Saying done means accepting the flaws permanently. It means the crooked bit stays crooked and is now part of the house and will be looked at for years. Not deciding keeps the possibility open, and the possibility is comfortable, and it costs a room.

You are holding a door open that has been costing you a room, and an open possibility has never once been worth what an unfinished house costs. The Spirit of God is the one who makes the closing bearable, and the written word closes the account with a date rather than with a satisfaction.

And one more, and it is the thing this whole site stands on. The flaws do not have to be accepted gladly.

You were never asked to be pleased about the crooked part, and calling a thing done has never once required anybody to like every inch of it. Nehemiah 6:15 does not say the wall was admired. It says the wall was finished, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets those two be different things.

Finish one thing and say the word

Here is the assignment and the second half is the half that people skip.

Finish one thing tonight at the standard available to you.

Something small. Something that has been nearly there for weeks. The bit of trim, the last bracket, the second coat on the small wall.

You have one thing available tonight that can be finished at the standard you have got, and the standard available has never once been the wrong standard to finish at. Nehemiah 6:15 records a wall finished by tired people in a hurry, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room while something gets closed off.

Do it to whatever level it comes out at. Not carefully. Not to the best of your ability. To the level it comes out at when a tired person does it on an ordinary evening.

Then say the word done out loud. Out loud, in the room, in a normal voice. That is done.

That second half is not decoration and it is not a motivational trick. Saying it is the act that closes the thing, and until it is said the job stays open regardless of what has been done to it. There are things in that house that were finished years ago and are still open, because nobody ever said the word over them.

Then walk away and do not go back and look at it tonight.